Wtf

How ironic that you would start an pointless thread to moan about spam

exactly what i thought lol. talking about why we get the spam wouldn't help, even if we knew the reason...

Its my right to moan. If it ruins my thud experience why should i not raise my voice?

But is it not also our right to not listen to you moaning?

But to be more serious, there isn't really a lot one can do about all the spam. We just have to rely on druids and such to make sure they get removed ASAP.

Although, saying that, I think it was ratty who had a good idea in another thread about getting the thing where you type out the letters in an image to prove you are human as you register.

yep. not that anyone ever reacted to it

I hate that idea. I hate those things.

Maybe there is another way. I wanted to know why we got them all of a sudden

if we knew, we'd have done something already. i just know that i also had an increase in email spam over the last couple of weeks.
i'm not fond of those letter thingies either, but it probably would help, since only a bot can be daft enough to believe posting a bunch of links will be of any use other than to annoy everyone.

Spam spam spam spam SPAM spam spam spam spam spam spam SPAM SPAM spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam...
sorry just wanted to say something useless as well

A slightly less annoying variant of the CAPTCHA wiggly texts is reCAPTCHA - less annoying because your skill as a human reader isn't actually wasted, it's used to help decipher scanned text that computers can't read.

Unfortunately, the whole CAPTCHA idea is probably on the way out - computers are getting better and better at solving them, and if they can't then spammers have been known to hire minimum wage labour in the developing world to solve them. Given that (with practice) a person can solve a couple of hundred or more in an hour, that works out at barely a penny/cent for each one, which (depending on the account) can be plenty worth it.

However, even if it is going to bite the dust soon, for now at least CAPTCHAs do have some use. I know I cut down the spam on my site completely when the spambots decided it wasn't worth the time to try solving them...

MS

you know, i have wondered about that. if it's scanned text that computers can't decipher, how does the thing know you entered the correct word if it hasn't been deciphered before? :-S

It probably is also a good sign. It means the site is getting attention and might be known better on the Internet. I do think all the banners that have been distributed externally to show on this page helped somehow also in this respect.

Yay. The banners did good

Cos it gets you to do two words - one to which it knows the answer, and one to which it doesn't. If you get the known one right, then it takes your answer for the second one as "probably useful", or words to that effect (it'll send the unknown word to several people, and compare their answers).

MS

ok that makes sense.

yay! Bestiality porn spam FTW....

and why was I not invited?

***content removed by ponder***

Now now, HOG. I know that was probably meant as joke, but I will not personally allow that here. People need to stop using that word detrimentally.

Well, we took drastic measures (smart CAPTCHAs) that only launch under certain circumstances, and then still block when probable spam is detected. We should engender and new reputation, amongst spammers at least, as being "not worth it".

Alright now, back to Discworld topics! Carry on as before...

i would so not say that if i were you...
we have not had any spam since said measures were taken. yay. although i may have just caused the apocralypse by saying that...

I know he is not gay:) good times on msn proved it.